Core and AM info in 3.4

[downscc 1,327]

I found something interesting (to me) yesterday regarding ground texture blurries in v3.4, which were never a problem for me in earlier versions.  Any view of the ground from flight levels was not good and I found that I could refresh textures (I assigned Ctrl+K to this in P3D) would sharpen the image for a few minutes.  I played with config settings and reset most display and terrain settings to default, went down this trail for a couple of days repeating the last 30 min of a flight looking for improvements to no avail. Until I spotted a thread regarding affinity mask and blurries.  I've been running my quad core 6700K with HT off and affinity mask = 14 for most of this year but now with v3.4 best results for me come with not using an affinity mask and let P3D manage loading on all four cores.

 

The improvement was immediate and a big relief. 

 

To recap the things I have had to do with my system after the update to v3.4 are:  Update couatl via FSDT addon manager installer, not by FSDT own update process but running the "setup_addonmanagerX.exe" installer from FSDT to download new modules; this cured a problem I was having with stackhash module crashes.  Then I had to delete the cameras.cfg file and let P3D rebuild it to fix a severe problem I was having with VAS and OOM errors.  Finally, turning off affinity mask in prepre3d.cfg fixed my problem with ground texture blurries.

 

I now have a stable working P3D simulator capable of 16 hr long hauls in the B77W including trips into and out of KLAX with FTX NA SCA region, and everything is looking pretty good.

[WebMaximus 372]

Interesting indeed to hear that rebuilding cameras.cfg made such a huge impact on VAS consumtion!

 

Looking forward to try this one out myself on a flight because so far I only tested it real quick by loading up a saved situation in the NGX standing at gate 5 at ESSA.

[Richard Sennett 2,499]

I found something interesting (to me) yesterday regarding ground texture blurries in v3.4, which were never a problem for me in earlier versions.  Any view of the 

 

Interesting - dont have any blurry terrain textures but cant hurt to see if not running AM would be better now in 3.4  :wink:

[SteveW 1,792]

It's true 3.4 performs slightly differently, but the recommendation for four cores remains the same: four cores has always been recommended no AM, let the sim use all four cores and start addons above core zero, preferably on cores 2 and 3. Recommended is HT enabled if you got it on your CPU and AM=85 (four jobs) or AM=245 (six jobs). Using three cores (AM=14) is never going to be as good as four (AM=0=15), but only really comes in handy if we want to restrict an addon to core zero and keep the sim off of core zero. Even in this case HT enabled and AM=116 performs better than with HT off and AM=14.

[Christopher Low 5,341]

I get the feeling my CPU knowledge base will go up a notch after Friday evening, Steve :wink:

[SteveW 1,792]

Don't worry, I only talk about food, beer and women when I'm out with the lads.

[G-YMML1 582]

So, with version 3.4.  HT= off and AM=14 is not longer a winning combo, correct? i7-6700k (O-ed to 4.7) is here with 980TI

[SteveW 1,792]

It does OK, it's a simple way to get OK performance not worrying about addons, but never wins prizes.

[G-YMML1 582]

I'm confused.

 

I have been always under impression that with HT=off and AM=14, the core 0 is reserved for add-ones (ASN, RC, PATC) with manual assignment via Process Exploere and cores 1-3 are reserved for P3D? What did change now? Should I get rid of AM and assign add-ones to either core 2 or core 3?

[Boomer 1,619]

I thought it was advised to forget AM in p3dv3...

[SteveW 1,792]

confused? Remember that four cores are always better than three, but you must manage addons, place them on the last two cores. Using three cores will never win over four, but AM=14 is a simple way to forget addons since it leaves a core free for that activity. Not perfect but OK performance. Therefore we can forget the AM in P3D. With HT enabled it's a different matter and P3D is not like FSX. P3D will create jobs on each Logical Processor, but FSX utilises alternate LPs as with the pattern AM=85=01,01,01,01, and so 85 is recommended with P3D, and addons on the last two cores means LPs 5 and 7. Please refer to my posts on HT and AMs elsewhere in the forums.

[Richard Sennett 2,499]

Steve has spoken lol this is what I use AM=85 HT On works great

[SteveW 1,792]

lol, mostly they all do. With P3D we can alter the scenario loading speed for example try 253 and it hogs the CPU to get faster loading but can coincide with other exe activity like panels and so on. May be better on one setup and not on another different scenery could be worse.

[edpatino 1,960]

Steve has spoken lol this is what I use AM=85 HT On works great

 

Another one here!.

Cheers, Ed

[WebMaximus 372]

I've had HT off and not using any AM and it works great and has been for many years after I decided to step off this AM/no AM train.

 

The main reason for me to keep HT OFF is having it enabled will increase the temp of my CPU by a significant amount of degrees not allowing me to run the CPU at the same speed I can do with HT OFF and in my testing raw CPU speed always gave better results in any FS compared to having HT ON.

Edited October 4, 2016 by WebMaximus